A number of list members have likely been wondering why there has been no
activity to speak of here on the paleodiet list for the last week. A long
and detailed answer would involve far more detail than anyone really needs
to know, but here's the short of it:

This is a "moderated" list. This means that except for certain individuals,
no messages submitted to the list will be distributed until the list owner
(yours truly) clears it. This is an automated process; when a message is
submitted to the list, it appears in my mailbox and if I approve it I send
a special message to the listserv robot telling it to go ahead and
distribute the message. This is not a particularly time-consuming task
under normal circumstances; either I approve of the message or I write the
person who wrote it and explain my problem with it.

Last Monday I had a serious family emergency that was both unforeseen and
unavoidable and which required me to drive over 5,000 miles in only one
week.  Upon leaving for the trip I brought my laptop computer in the hopes
of keeping up with essential functions like clearing list messages.
However, technical problems and practical matters regarding the trip left
me with no free time whatsoever and no practical ability to get online even
if I did have an hour or two to spare. The upshot has been that until my
return at 2:00 a.m. this morning.  I was unable to clear any messages
submitted to me, nor even to add new members (and we have had several
academics apply for membership in the last week, who were only finally
added this evening).

Under normal circumstances I would have simply had someone else take over
moderation duties until my return but the sudden and extraordinary
circumstances didn't make that practical.  There will, however, be no
repeat of this problem.

List members have my apology for unusual delays over the past week and my
promise not to see this problem repeated.  It is not conceivable that I
will be called away for such a lengthy time period while completely unable
to get online again.

Thanks all for your patience.  Our list membership has now grown to over
100 people, the majority of whom have doctorates, and most of the remainder
with master's degrees or in graduate programs in related fields. We have
not seen a great deal of traffic but I expect that to pick up in the coming
weeks, as we have had many thought-provoking discussions so far and there
is much more to discuss.

For those of you who are interested, archives of all previous discussios on
this list are now available on the World Wide Web.  I especially encourage
all new members to review this resource, as there is much information to
absorb from the conversations we have had in the last two months.  All
members should see http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/paleodiet.html and
probably bookmark it for future reference.

Thanks again, and welcome to our new members.

Dean Esmay, Paleodiet list owner